Group of Seven
(Beginning early1900s)

   Early in the 1910's casual group of Canadian painters began to paint Canadian wilderness landscape as they saw it. They journeyed all over the country to paint the waste with bold colors and a broad, decorative style. They socialized together around the group's sponsor and mentor Tom Thomson at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto. It was a common meeting place for the artists.

   During the spring of 1917, tragedy struck the group as Tom Thomson drowned in Algonquin Park's Canoe Lake under suspicious circumstances. This tragedy shocked the Group.

   They formerly didn't call themselves the Group of Seven until their first exhibit in 1920. At the time they were seven: J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Frank Johnston and Franklin Carmichael, A. Y. Jackson and Lawren S. Harris. They were not limited to the seven founding members, and they eventually changed their name to the Canadian Group of Painters.

   Group of Seven artists were both strongly influenced by Post-Impressionism in France and Scandinavian art of North. They were creating bold, vividly-colored canvases, and instilling elements of the landscape with symbolic meaning.